Friday Email: 17 March 2017

Every Friday morning our lead analyst Mark Riding sends out his
weekly run-down
and
upcoming events
in the investor calendar, like this one:

The FTSE 100 hit another all time high on Thursday and is now trading above 7400. The past week saw a slowdown in reporting activity but there were still some big dividend increases from Antofagasta, Brooks Macdonald and Clinigen.

Amec Foster Wheeler will merge with John Wood Group to create an oil services giant. The two ex FTSE 100 companies will no doubt re-enter the FTSE 100 when they are one entity. Amec has been forced to reduce its dividend over the past couple of years due to the oil price collapse whilst John Wood has kept up its very impressive dividend track record. However, it's dividend cover has been falling throughout the past few years. The merger looks good for both sets of shareholders and at a time when the oil industry is showing signs of recovery.

At the top of the Optimizer sits Carillion with a final dividend already declared for a 3 dividend yield of over 12%. The shares go ex-dividend in May and trade on a PE of just over 6 times. They are trading close to their lows for the year. They are not spectacular but they do have a very good dividend track record having doubled their dividend in the ten years from 2006 to 2016. They have managed to increase their dividend every year during that time albeit at a very slow pace in recent years. They go ex dividend for 12.65p on the 11th May against a share price of 223p.

The week ahead is still quite busy as the reporting season starts to wind down over the next few weeks. We will see final results from Bellway, Kingfisher, Next and Smiths Group.

This email was originally sent on
Friday 17 March 2017

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